If anyone still needs proof that gun crime is already illegal (and aggressively prosecuted) look no further than the case of Filiberto Walle.
Federal prosecutors say Walle, a 24-year-old from Edinburgh, Texas, pleaded guilty to running an unlicensed firearms dealing operation that stretched from Colorado to Texas. And this wasn’t some paperwork oopsie. This was a full-on straw-purchase pipeline built to move big-ticket rifles across state lines.
According to court records, Walle spent the summer of 2023 acquiring .50 BMG rifles from federally licensed gun dealers in Colorado. These included Barrett M82A1 and Desert Tech HTI rifles, firearms often labeled “anti-materiel” because of their ability to defeat hard targets. The problem wasn’t the rifles. The problem was how Walle got them.
Walle wasn’t a licensed dealer, so he couldn’t legally buy firearms for resale. Instead, prosecutors say he recruited others to do the buying for him. Money changed hands, paperwork got signed by third parties, background checks were passed, and the guns walked out the door. Just not into the hands of the people who filled out the forms.
That’s the textbook definition of a straw purchase, and federal law treats it accordingly.
Investigators say Walle worked closely with a Denver-area partner and used multiple buyers to spread out the transactions, a tactic commonly used to avoid raising red flags. The scheme reportedly unraveled when one gun store refused to complete a sale, something gun control debates tend to ignore when they claim dealers don’t police themselves.
The fallout was swift. Multiple co-conspirators were convicted on federal charges ranging from false statements to witness retaliation. Walle himself was arrested in Texas in late 2024 and pleaded guilty last December.
Last week, a federal judge sentenced him to nine months in prison on each count, to be served concurrently. He was allowed to walk out of court but must report to federal custody within two weeks, according to reporting from CBS News.
And here’s the part that matters: every step Walle took was already illegal. No new bans required. No feature lists. No magazine limits. Just existing law, enforced exactly as intended.
Funny how that works.
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